Human Security

Security: Theory and Policy

Abstract

This article attempts to clarify the concept of human security in relation to the current debate on what the primary referent of security is and whose security comes first. Then the traditional concept of security closely identified with the military affairs of states, as well as the relatively new concepts of societal security and global security will be examined in contributing to the theoretical development of human security.
Although ‘human security’ is a word originally coined in the UNDP's Human Development Report 1993, the idea that individual human beings should be the ultimate referent of security has been asserted by some schools of thought. Ken Booth argues for recasting security in terms of ‘emancipation’ from social inequality and oppression, which seems to be mostly shared by the UNDP's Report (human rights and development approach). For sociologists like Anthony Giddens, individuals face globalized risks arising from more abstract system of modernity challenging the continuity of their very identity. Among global governance school, Richard Falk advocates humane governance for all individuals as well as peoples.
Threats to human security include broad range of issues covering from social violence to military conflicts, from poverty to environmental degradation, or from racial discrimination to the loss of identity. I argue that concern with human security becomes especially acute in the following situations. (1) Inability or non-existence of a government (‘failed state’) tends to result in poverty, famine, ethnic conflict or flow of refugees. (2) On the contrary, in case of excessive level of state intervention (a ‘maximal state’ like Nazi Germany), a state itself becomes a source of threat to its citizens. (3) Military conflicts and wars among states are of course the most dangerous threat to the existence of individual humans. (4) Threats to human identity could be examined in terms of identity of various social groupings which individuals belong to. (5) Some threats to human life may be caused by activities diffused throughout the globe, which include destruction of ozone layer, overpopulation and international terrorism.
This paper concludes, first, the human rights and development approach which places individuals at the center of security studies serves as the core for further theorization. Second, the role of states and of national security for individual human beings, however, should be clarified and incorporated into the theory of human security. Then, multi-layered analysis in which we also examine security of social groupings and the planet is to be introduced.